Stamping Ground (7 page)

“Tell them to take it out of my taxes.”

I stifled a grin. Either the lawman had qualities I hadn't suspected or a little of me was beginning to rub off on him. I was starting to enjoy my subordinate role in this thing.

He wasn't finished. “I told you who we are. It's polite to introduce yourself back, ain't it, Lieutenant?”

“It's Major,” snapped the other. “Major Quincy Harms, acting commanding officer at Fort Ransom until Washington City appoints a permanent replacement for Colonel Broderick. I'm sorry, Marshal, for all the inconvenience, but you must understand that the situation here is tense. We can trust no one.” There was no apology in his tone.

“So you shoot everyone on sight?”

“Trooper Gordon will be reprimanded for his lapse in
judgment. I believe you mentioned a letter from Judge Flood.” He held out a hand.

The marshal drew out the paper Flood had given him the morning of our departure and handed it over. Harms unfolded it and read. The muscles in his jaw twitched. Then he thrust the letter inside his tunic.

“Sergeant Burdett, relieve Trooper Gordon of his duties and place him under house arrest until further orders.”

An infantryman, the private had no side arm to be taken from him. The man in the forage cap merely leaned down, screwed the muzzle of his rifle into the other's collar, and began walking his horse forward. Rather than be trampled, the trooper let himself be prodded along like a stray calf. Somehow I got the impression that he was going to be punished not so much for firing a premature shot as for allowing himself to be overpowered by a civilian.

“Come with me, please, all of you. Bring your horses.” The major reined his black around and splashed through the water toward the fort entrance. The third rider, a middle-aged corporal with a plug of tobacco bulging beneath his lower lip, followed him.

“Damn tin soldiers,” muttered Hudspeth as he mounted the subdued buckskin.

One half of the huge double slat gate swung inward to allow us entrance, then was pushed shut by two troopers and secured with a timber bar that must have been shipped, like the logs of which the fort's framework was constructed, downriver from Montana or by rail from Minnesota. From there we rode past crowds of hard-eyed men in uniform who watched us with hands clasped tightly around their Springfields and Spencers. They had the desperate look of animals left too long at the ends of their tethers. Before the post livery a company of troopers was dismounting wearily, their horses, faces and uniforms covered with a mud of sweat and dust. Among them was a pair of empty mounts bearing the army's brand.

From the porch overhang of a long adobe building swung a sign that identified it as the garrison commander's office.
The major and corporal left their saddles in exhausted unison, their square-topped boots double-crunching on the carted-in gravel. Jac and Hudspeth and I dismounted more earthily and hitched up at the watering trough, where the horses wet their noses eagerly. Harms handed his reins to the corporal.

“The right front needs reshoeing. And see to it that our guests' mounts are rubbed down and fed. They're dead on their feet.”

The corporal saluted and led off his and the major's mounts.

The office smelled of coffee and stale tobacco. The walls were bare adobe reinforced by wooden timbers, and the floor was made of pine planks eight inches wide and scrubbed white as bears' teeth by some miserable trooper on punishment detail with a scouring pad and a toothbrush for the cracks. The desk was battered, scarred in numerous places where matches had been struck against its scaly surface, and covered by a large-scale map of eastern Dakota. Holes in the corners and a pale spot on the wall behind the desk indicated that the map had been taken down recently for close study. A curled corner was held in place beneath a white china mug with damp brown grains clustered in the bottom. Behind the desk stood a high-backed swivel chair, its dark wood covered to within an inch of the age-polished edges by hard, dry leather secured with large brass tacks. From fort to fort, the decor never varied.

Major Harms peeled off his hat and pegged it beside the door. His hair, like his beard, was jet black, short at the temples and neck and full on top. A bald spot the size of a ten-dollar goldpiece showed defiantly at the back of his head. He made no attempt to conceal it. He stepped around behind the desk and dropped into the swivel chair in a cloud of powdery dust. His forehead just beneath the hairline was ringed unevenly with several different shades of tan where he'd settled and resettled his hat under the scorching sun.

Hudspeth sat down on the edge of the sturdy captain's chair that faced the desk as if easing himself into a scalding
tub of water. Evidently it had been some time since he'd sat a saddle as long as he had during the past few days. I chose a bench that ran along the right wall and wished it were the back of my horse, it was that hard. Pere Jac remained standing. In his dusty half-Indian, half-white man's attire, his pewter-colored hair loose about his shoulders, eyes impassive as the heads of newly driven nails, he might have been posing for the stamp on a penny. The mingled scents of leather and dust and sour sweat and, faintly, old bear grease wafted from him. Aside from the grease, I was at a loss to determine how much of it was his and how much mine.

“Frankly, gentlemen, I don't see how I can help you, nor why I should try.” Harms folded aside the map on his desk, revealing mottled traces of green blotter paper beneath a pattern of dead black ink.

“The letter calls for your co-operation,” Hudspeth rapped.

“Not mine, Broderick's. And it calls for something which was not his to give. He had no authority to bring in an outside party. Hostile Indians fall within the jurisdiction of the U.S. Army and no other. Their crimes are not a matter for the civil courts.”

“Judge Flood thinks different.”

“Judge Flood can go to bloody hell.” The words came lashing out. He fell silent, rolled the map back farther, found a hand-worked wooden humidor standing on the corner of the desk, and removed the cover. He drew out a cigar the length of his wrist, struck a match—placing a fresh groove on a previously unmarred section of desk—and ignited it. Blue smoke came billowing out in true Grant style. I don't smoke, but it would have been nice if he'd offered us one. He used the same match to light a lamp with a milky white glass shade on the opposite corner and sat back as the soft glow gulped up the shadows.

“Forgive me, gentlemen,” he said. This time he sounded sincere. “I've been in the saddle eighteen hours straight. We're short-handed, but it's important we show the enemy
a stern face. I'm tired and my patience is on a short halter.”

“Any luck?”

He looked at me quickly. “Luck? Doing what?”

I didn't answer. Finally he shook his head.

“We hit every arroyo and dry wash between here and Jamestown. No trace of Ghost Shirt or his warriors. Two of my Indian scouts deserted. They're afraid the Great Spirit is on the other side. Superstitious heathens!” He puffed furiously. His features swam behind an azure haze.

“You're lying, Major.”

He stared. Something akin to rage glimmered in his dull brown eyes. I went on before he could blow.

“Your horse was heaving and covered with froth. They don't get that way unless they're ridden fast and hard. Two riderless horses came in with the patrol, and I know enough about Indians to know they don't desert on foot in this country. My guess is you buried what was left of those scouts after Ghost Shirt got through with them, then took off in pursuit. Where's he holed up?”

Harms made a thing out of picking all the lint off his cigar.

“We sent them on ahead to scout out the territory.” He spoke slowly. “When they stopped leaving sign we tracked them to the James River. We found them hanging upside down from a cottonwood over a smoldering fire. Their skulls had exploded from the heat.”

“Ghost Shirt. Where is he?”

For a moment it looked as if he might answer. Then his dazed expression cleared and the stubborn glint returned to his eyes. “That's army business. So far all the casualties in this quadrant have been sustained by the military. I won't take the responsibility for any civilian deaths here.”

“Colonel Broderick—” Hudspeth began.

“Colonel Broderick was a good soldier, but he was weak. He worried more about holding onto his command than keeping the peace in his sector. As a result he lost his own life and those of a dozen of his men while on routine patrol. There will be no such blunders beneath my command.
As long as you three are here you are welcome, within limits, to the facilities of the post, but you will not be allowed to leave until the situation is in hand.” He started to rise.

“What was a full colonel doing leading a routine patrol?” I pressed. “That's a job for a captain or a lieutenant.”

He looked at me again. A faint smile played over his lips but fell short of his eyes. “You served?”

“I was with Schoepf at Mill Springs and with Rosecrans at Murfreesboro. A ball smashed my leg there and I sat out the rest of my enlistment in splints.”

“I thought I'd noticed a slight limp. You must have been very young.”

“I was nineteen when I signed up.”

“Why did you leave?”

“I don't like officers.”

That ended the friendly coversation. He stalked toward the door and clapped on his hat. “Sergeant Burdett will be in to show you to your quarters.”

“You didn't answer my question, Major,” I said.

He ignored me and tugged open the door. I went on. “Colonel Broderick was tracking Ghost Shirt, wasn't he? He got too close and the Indians attacked. Which means you have a fair idea where their stronghold is.”

He turned back. Beyond his shoulder, purple twilight had settled over the compound, silhouetting the sentries on the wall in liquid black. “What makes you think it's a stronghold?”

“You took thirty men and came back with twenty-eight. If you'd met Ghost Shirt in the open you'd have killed at least a few of his braves and lost more than two scouts. The only explanation is they're holed up someplace where you can't dig them out. All I'm asking is where.”

“Suppose I told you. What can you do that we can't, one underarmed deputy and two old has-beens?”

The marshal sprang from his chair and lunged toward the major, who clawed at his holster. I stuck out a leg, tripping
Hudspeth. He threw out his arms and struck the floor hard on his face. The china mug fell from the desk, clunked against the planks, and rolled around in a lazy circle, coming to rest against the lawman's left boot.

Pere Jac remained rooted in the middle of the floor. He hadn't moved. I had already pegged him as a born survivor.

“You're forgetting that one of these old has-beens almost turned one of your men into fishbait a little while ago,” I reminded the major.

He put away the Colt and secured the strap that held it in place. “It's a moot point, Deputy,” he said. “You're confined to the post for the duration.”

“We can make it as hot in here as it is out there.” I slid out the Deane-Adams and pointed it in the general direction of his groin. He kept his calm.

“I don't think you will. You're sworn to uphold the law.”

I grinned and pulled back the hammer. As I did so I heard another weapon being cocked behind me. It could have been an echo. I knew it wasn't.

Harms smiled, this time all the way. “It might be a good idea to give me the gun.” He came forward with his hand outstretched. “Sergeant Burdett has a Spencer rifle pointed at the back of your head.”

“He speaks the truth, Page.” Jac's tone was noncommittal.

I shifted my head just far enough to take in the outline of the man leaning through the open window behind my right shoulder, a rifle in his hands. I held onto the revolver. Something in my expression halted the officer in mid-step. His smile drained from his features.

“You know,” I said, “everyone thinks the gun at a man's back is deadlier than the one in his hand, but that's not true. They both kill just the same.”

Drops of moisture sparkled on Harms's tanned forehead. This wasn't his game, I could tell. He was used to shooting it out with rifles and howitzers across several hundred yards of open ground until one side or the other gave up or ran
out of ammunition. Here there was no room for his brand of bravery. Face to face with .45-caliber death in that narrow room, he felt fear for what was probably the first time in his career.

In that instant I threw myself from the bench, hit the floor, and rolled. There was an explosion and a cloud of splinters near my head and something hot seared my right cheek, but I kept moving. I came up flat against the wall with my gun still in my grip.

As the sergeant maneuvered to get something worthwhile in his sights, I grabbed the Spencer's barrel with my free hand and jerked it downward. It throbbed in my hand, belched flame. One of the broad white planks in the floor splintered and split down the middle from one end of the room to the other. The simultaneous roar set my ears to jangling and brought dust and loose dirt showering down from the rafters. I twisted the gun from Burdett's desperate grasp and pulled it through the window.

Harms went for his Colt. He was pretty fast. He had the strap almost undone by the time Hudspeth, back on his feet, hauled out his Smith & Wesson and clapped the muzzle to the major's temple.

“Go for it,” he said. “Please go for it.”

Harms left the Colt where it was.

I had Burdett covered with the Deane-Adams. Short and thickset, he had sunken eyes overhung with black, bushy brows and a cleft chin bunched up like a fist. Tiny blue specks peppered the left side of his face just beneath the leathery skin. Some time or other he had come within a hair's breadth of having his head blown off by a shotgun blast. His left eye glittered unnaturally in the lamplight, and I knew it was glass. His nose was an incongruous pug, but he had filled the gap between it and his wide mouth with a thick black moustache. I counted to ten, then extended the Spencer to him. He stared at it as if he'd never seen it before, then, gingerly, as if he thought it might blow up, took hold of it and hauled it back through the opening. Hudspeth watched, thunderstruck.